The Business/Judo of Life

Dr. De Mars blog on having achieved success in business, sports and academics without ever actually having grown up. Also includes random thoughts on judo, parenting,mixed martial arts, winning & whatever I feel like rambling on about today.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

A guy, lets call him Bob, is doing business with someone and they make a mistake that costs him significant money or inconvenience. They incorrectly charge his debt card by a huge amount making his bank account overdrawn, the travel office in his company forgets to book his ticket so he's standing at the airport counter with no seat to that conference in Paris because the flight is sold out. The person who made the mistake says they are sorry, but there is nothing they can do to correct the problem. After all, what can they do?

B. Say, "Fuck that. I am not paying for your mistake. Your company is going to fix this."

C. 'Ask nicely' is not an option because he already tried that and we are back to A or B

Or, try this one.

Bob, who is apparently having a really bad day, is standing in line in a dark theater waiting to go see the latest blockbuster. The guy in line behind him starts rubbing up against him, clearly excited to see him, if you know what I mean, and I am sure you do. Bob turns around and says, "Hey!" Pervert Pete says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you'd be into it."

Should Bob:

A. Accept his apology. After all, some people would be into it. An honest mistake.

B. Say, "What the fuck? Do that again and I'll punch you in your fucking face!"

C. 'Tell him firmly but politely' is not an option because he already tried that. Choose again.

Do you have your answers ready? If you wouldn't mind, I'd really appreciate it if you post in the comments if your FIRST response was A, B or C. You can do it anonymously, if you want. All comments are moderated, so they won't show up right away.

Now here is the second part and this takes more honesty than most people have, seriously.

I have never aspired to be a nice woman.

I have tried to be a good person, a fair person, a kind person but nice has never been on my list. I'll tell you why ...

Nice women get screwed over.

Recently, I was in a similar situation as Bob and I said,

Fuck that! I'm not accepting your apology. You need to do something.

The situation was resolved and later I was told that I should have handled it nicely. I disagree. Initially, the suggestion was maybe it wasn't a big deal, like I could get to the conference a day late and so what if I missed meetings with customers.

Women get that a lot when they object to being mistreated.

"What's the big deal?"

I have seen this happen over and over. Whether it is a promotion, an upgrade to first class, the opportunity to speak at an event or an executive who sends you a picture of his dick,

Yes, I understand you being unhappy, but you could be nicer.

Let me make this clear:

I am NOT "unhappy", I am fucking pissed and I have every right in the world to be.

Really the only reason I refuse to be nicer is that I strongly believe in being the change you want to see in the world and modeling that for my children and grandchildren. Very often, it is suggested to women, but not men, that they should overlook mistreatment, from sexual harassment to abysmal service, and, particularly, they should overlook unfair treatment in favor of men.

When I was a kid, my mom told me a story about how a girl in her high school class got the most votes for class president but the nun who was running the election announced that the boy who got the second-most votes would be president because it would help him get into college and that girl didn't need to be class president. My mom said no one spoke up because, "What good would it do?"

In my life, it has been suggested to me that I give up raises, promotions, offices to a man who 'needed it more' for either his family or his ego. It has been suggested that I should let bygones be bygones with people who have been blatantly dishonest in deals because "we need to get along" or "you don't want to get a bad reputation."

In short, throughout my pretty long life, over and over, I have seen "Be nice" said to girls as code for "Let me take advantage of you."

Why weren't you at Wrestlemania?

I missed watching Ronda's Wrestlemania debut live because I was at a software conference (SAS Global Forum) that had asked me to speak months in advance. Dennis got a WWE pass that let us watch it on the computer, so I did that and skipped most of the opening session of the conference.

I did skip this conference once, when Ronda qualified for her first Olympic Trials as a teenager. I was co-presenter on a paper but my co-author volunteered to give the paper so I didn't need to attend.

Starting a new company in a new country in a new language sounds crazy, do you really like that?

When I told my sister I had gotten selected for Start-up Chile she said,

"If you're happy, then I'm happy for you, but leaving my house, moving to the other side of the world, starting all over again in a new language sounds like my definition of hell."

A woman I met at the conference, who is from Rumania commented that people who relocate have a different attitude toward change. I think that must be so, because I am finding life pretty good. More of my time than I'd like has been taken up with organizational and legal stuff - incorporating the company, interviewing, writing contracts - and all of it being in a second language has taken me twice as long. Overall, though, life is good, and I even managed to knock out a good bit of code for our next game while sitting in the airport.

Have you done any judo in Chile?

Nope. Honestly, many days have been me getting up to go to my first meeting then answering a few emails before rushing to the next meeting and finally getting time to eat "breakfast" around 5 o'clock. Just when things were starting to settle down a little, I caught a plane to Denver. Okay, now my flight to Panama is boarding.

I just came back from 3 days at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio.

It was certainly a whirlwind trip - 13 hours to fly from Santiago, meeting up with my old friend, Steve Scott to go watch the power lifting and throwing the caber.

I met up with my lovely daughter, Ronda and her husband for lunch, attended a fundraiser for the After-School All-stars , was promoted to seventh-degree black belt along with Ronda getting her sixth-degree black belt, attended the International Sports Hall of Fame to see Bas Rutten, Ronda, Drs. Jan and Terry Todd and Phil Keoghan get inducted.

That was a touching event. All of those inducted had been pioneers in getting mainstream acceptance for their respective sports and then gone on to have impressive careers after competition. Think of the 44-year-old guy in the bar talking about scoring the winning touchdown in the high school state championships. Now, imagine the complete opposite of that guy and you have the inductees.

It was particularly cool to see Jan Todd get an award because she’s older than me (yes, such a thing is possible) and women lifting weights was just not something respectable married women did.
When she said,

“I’m proud to have been a small part of young girls like Ronda Rousey not having to grow up wondering if it’s okay to be strong”

- if I was the crying type of person I would have cried, but I’m not, so I didn’t, but the thought was there.

There were 200,000 people at the event, and I heard there is a similar event in Las Vegas as well as several regional ones.
There were a lot of top-level weight lifters and professional body builders (I didn’t even know that was a thing) .

There weren’t 200,000 Olympic contenders, though. Most of the people were interested in being somewhat physically fit, probably worked out at something, whether it was lifting weights or fencing. They participate in events like throwing the caber for fun.

It left me wondering why we don’t have more focus on getting mentally fit.

Yes, we have events like the academic decathlon, but I don’t see much of the mind equivalent to the person who works out once or twice a week.

Maria hates my “push-ups for your brain” analogy, but we make games that are like that. Doing push-ups alone won’t make you an athlete, but they will help, and you can do them almost anywhere and for a long time or just 30 seconds. The more often you do push-ups, the stronger you will get, and that strength will help you in the other physical activities you decide to do.

I've been talking with some friends about doing a Strong Minds/ Strong Bodies campaign to encourage people to get and stay smarter as well as stronger.

It's on my list of 1,000,000 things to do. However, like this blog post, I DO eventually get to them.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

It's been a while since I posted here because I've been getting settled in Chile. If you didn't know I was in Santiago setting up what we fondly refer to as 7 Generation Games South, then clearly you don't follow closely enough on social media.

However, you are welcome to follow any of our accounts in a friendly, non-creepy stalker-ish way and then you will know things like the I am in Santiago working on getting our bilingual games into the Latin American market and meeting all kinds of crazy challenges. For example, today I was practicing giving the pitch for our start-up in Spanish. Afterwards, the person I was practicing with asked me (in Spanish, so I was rather proud of myself that I understood it all) :

"You were a world champion, your daughter is getting inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame, your other daughter is a CEO, you'll turn 60 years old in Santiago working on your start-up. You have a Ph.D. What is the key to success?"

I asked her,

"Success in what? In sports? In education? Parenting? Business?"

She said,

"Anything. You pick."

I thought about it for a while and I finally said.

Perseverance. I think not giving up is the key. For example, today was not my day. I was working on something for two hours and the whole thing got wiped out and I had to start over. Just a lot of things went wrong. Everyone got on my nerves. I missed a meeting because another meeting ran late. I didn't get back to several people because I was recreating the site that got deleted.We've been working on this company for a long time and the first few years were just making the games and getting them not to break, making sure that kids were actually learning. That took THREE YEARS of development, fundraising, testing and data analysis. Now it's been another year and a half of trying to get people to notice our games, download them, try them out and we're just now set to hit 10,000 users.

Why Forgotten Trail? This does relate to my point. Mid-way through the game, when a main character, Angie, gets discouraged, Ronda comes running up the hill, sits down and gives her a heart-to-heart talk. Angie says,

But it's just so hard to walk all the way across the country. I just want to give up.

Ronda tells her,

Where did you start from? At the bottom of this hill? No? North Dakota? Well, look how far you have come. You don't expect to run one 100-yard dash and win the Olympics, do you?

Ronda, as a game character

This gets to my point which by now you think I don't have, oh ye of little faith.

It took me 14 years from when I started judo to when I won the world championships.

There were a lot of naysayers during that time. A lot of setbacks. I was ranked number one in the U.S. when I got pregnant and Eve went to the world championships instead of me. Two years later, I had knee surgery three weeks before the world trials. I still won - and yes, of course it hurt, really badly.

Plenty of people who were not as successful at judo, business, education or parenting worked very hard but they didn't do it as consistently. When they had a day like today, they said, "Screw it!" and took the rest of the day off instead of doubling down to fix what needed to be done. They worked really hard 80% of the days and that 20% they didn't feel like it, they slacked off.

It's like winter in North Dakota, most people think they can handle it if they come for a few days, even if it's 20 below. They don't realize that it isn't how cold it gets in North Dakota that drives people crazy (although that's pretty bad) , it's how LONG it goes on.

The secret to success is getting up every day and starting with the same enthusiasm, no matter how things went the day before, and doing that day after day after day.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

I'm heading to Santiago, Chile on Friday morning, as part of Startup Chile. Although I will be back in the United States a couple of times in the next 7 months, I doubt I'll be back in California and, the way our lives are, I doubt I'll see my daughters much, if at all.

Last week, I met up with Ronda before she headed to Colombia and I knew I'd probably see her only for a few hours over the next several months, when she's getting inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame, and then I need to get back to Chile and she needs to get back to wherever the hell she's head off next (as if the lady heading to Santiago has any room to talk).

I felt like I should have had some more profound things to say than,

"I love you and don't forget your passport."

Later in the week, I had brunch with my daughter, Jennifer, and her family and she commented,

"Do you realize that this will probably be the longest I have been apart from you since I was born?"

Jenn went to Santa Monica College, then to San Francisco State University, which is a short plane ride away, then went to graduate school at USC and then to work in Los Angeles.

Jenn's Baby is just as cool as she is

That REALLY made me feel like I should have some profound advice, but we were kind of busy between the mimosas and chocolate covered strawberries and checking out the duck pond.

So, a little belated, here are some things I want my daughters to remember.

1. Good people snowball. I met a really good guy, Fidel Rodriguez, when he asked me to speak at a youth conference he organizes. He introduced me to Hector Verdugo, at Homeboy Industries, where they do wonderful work helping people move from gangs to college and jobs. When the staff from Spirit Lake Vocational Rehabilitation Project were in town, he invited them to visit their project. It reminded me of a lecture I attended by Sidney Harman where he talked about being friends with an attorney in his neighborhood just because he was such a good person. That attorney introduced him to a young minister - Dr. Martin Luther King. Make an effort to spend time with good people.2. Don't live your life to impress other people and you'll be a lot happier. Jennifer is the least well-known of my daughters, so much so that many people think I only have three children. She is a good mother, a good teacher, a good wife and does pretty much what she wants. I am 100% certain that Jenn doesn't care at all whether you even know she exists.

3. After the first unthinkable challenge you overcome, the next one is easier. Maria quit a safe journalism job to co-found 7 Generation Games . I went to Japan for my junior year of college, speaking little Japanese and knowing no one. Now, that I'm heading to Chile, I look back and think "If 18-year-old me could handle Tokyo, I'm sure I can succeed in Santiago with all of the resources and knowledge I have now." Julia is planning to study in Costa Rica over the summer. All of these choices are on the right path, wherever it happens to lead.

Whether it is changing careers or changing countries, take that leap of faith! You'll have a bigger, better, more fearless life and you won't regret it.

4. Everyone falls. It's getting up that matters. I used to think that judo saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight" was stupid. I was wrong. Ronda has had some hard falls in the last couple of years. She picked herself up, decided what would make her happy and went forward with it. (Oh, if you are thinking of posting some comment about "Oh, are you proud of how she swears, and does X, Y and Z" Go fuck yourself. I am damn proud of her. She's not perfect but neither are you and too bad that your mother doesn't love you as much.) We all make mistakes. You probably don't talk to anyone else as much as you talk to yourself in your own head, so don't beat yourself up (verbally) when you make a mistake.

What's a Quora? It's a question and answer site. Mostly I answer questions about parenting, teaching and judo because I consider myself to know a bit about these topics. Just in case you are not on Quora, here are a few of my answers on parenting.

WHAT ARE YOUR SECRETS TO RAISING SUCCESSFUL KIDS?

Wow, I wish I had secrets. The best advice anyone ever gave me was “Ask yourself if you are dong this for yourself or for your kid. If you can honestly answer you are doing it for your kid, you won’t go wrong.”

The second best advice came from a coach who said, “AnnMaria, I’m 53 years old. I don’t need a 15-year-old friend.”

I have gone through some hardships in my life - juvenile hall, foster care, divorce, the death of my husband. After you’ve been beaten, had someone take you to court and try to get custody of your child and had the person you love most die, there isn’t much people can threaten you with. As a result, I really don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about my parenting or what the neighbors or relatives thought when I let Jenn drop out of high school at 16 and go to community college or let Julia go to boarding school at 14 or let Ronda move across the country to train for judo or let Maria start school a year early.

Often, I hear parents give lip service to how important their kids are but then they put up with an awful coach or won’t switch their child’s school because they care what the other adults will think about them.

I think education is important and it is one thing you can give your child that will help them their whole lives, so I made sacrifices to give them the best possible education, from working 2 or 3 jobs to pay for NYU to moving to Minot so Ronda could get speech therapy.

What are some good parenting tips you can give me (a teen who is looking forward to being a parent) that I can use in the future?

Never hit your child unless you’d hit an adult under the same circumstances. I have four children and I have hit them a total of 4 times (one of them twice and one of them never). I hit one for running into the street so she would never do that again. I hit one when she was trying to wash her little sister’s hair with bleach. She didn’t know any better but she never tried that again.

Experiences > stuff. I spent a lot of money on private schools and training camps for my children, but none of them had a new car until they made enough money to buy their own.

Do parents ever look at their teen/adult child and just stop to appreciate that they raised an amazing person and brought them into the world? Like, "That's my child. Look how great they turned out".

Yes. Just about every day. I tell my children whenever they get down on themselves, “Just because you’re not perfect, doesn’t mean you’re not great.” They are great.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Since I travel a lot, to a wide variety of places, I see many travel disasters happen to other people, disasters which could have easily been prevented. Most of them don't happen to me any more because they happened once. Here are four tips which, if followed, can erase 80% of your problems both huge (my computer was stolen) and small (I couldn't brush my teeth this morning):

Anything you absolutely must have, never let go. This includes my computer, phone, ID , money and credit cards. While I have to let my computer and phone go through security, I have my ID and cards in my hand when I go through the scanner. I mean, literally, never let go of it. I never check my phone , computer or contacts.

Bring a small overnight bag. Think you are smart because everything is in your carry on? Think again. Overhead storage is full and now you need to check it and your flight is late so you are spending the night in Minneapolis. So, you're in first class and you are sure they'll be room for your bag?Guess what - the second leg of your flight is on a smaller plane and roller bags don't fit in the overhead. You'll have to check it but, gee, too bad, your bag didn't make it on the flight so you are meeting that client tomorrow morning wearing the same clothes you had on this morning. If I check a bag, my carry on is a bag small enough to fit under the seat next to my computer. It includes clean clothes for 1 day, charger for my phone and basic toiletries like toothpaste, toothbrush, contacts and deodorant. If I only have a carry on , I have a small cloth bag in it that I can throw my one-day stuff into in a few minutes if it turns out that I have to give up my carry on to baggage claim.

Realize that you can get your prescriptions filled almost anywhere in a pinch, that includes contacts, prescription medications. In Missouri, I realized I only had 5 days worth of contacts left and I was not going to be home for two weeks. I was able to get a trial pack for the next five days from a local optometrist, and my optometrist's office emailed me the prescription so I could get another three months' supply in Missouri. What if you can't get hold of your physician? There have been occasions when I was coaching and an athlete forgot or ran out of a prescription, we were out of town and could not reach their doctor. In that case, if you go to a local pharmacy with the empty bottle with your prescription they will usually give you a few days' supply if it's something you absolutely must have, like anti-convulsants. I'm pretty sure they will not do this for controlled substance like pain pills, for reasons that should be obvious.

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About Me

One world championships, a million dollars in contracts, four degrees, four children - and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Author: Winning on the Ground - available from Amazon & Black Belt and other book places.